Elspeth Guild

The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has launched a brainstorming exercise about the future policy priorities for the development of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). Migration and borders will constitute two of the most relevant policies on which the next EU budget covering the AFSJ beyond 2013 will be focused. This Policy Brief seeks to contribute to this brain-storming exercise by putting forward a package of policy recommendations covering the following three themes: I. How to structure Justice and Home Affairs in the EU: to get the best results. II. Mastering the integration debate and comprehensively framing the citizen/foreigner/immigrant relationship. III. The utility of large-scale information systems with interoperable databases including biometric technology for the protection of people living in the EU.

In May 2007, the European Commission issued a Proposal for a Council Directive providing for sanctions against employers of illegally staying third country nationals. The measure aims to provide a harmonised EU framework for imposing sanctions on employers for hiring third country nationals (TCNs) who do not enjoy a regular status of stay in the EU. This paper outlines the main contents of the proposal by looking at the obligations and sanctions applicable to the employer, the procedures foreseen for the presentation of complaints as well as the set of guarantees provided to the TCN worker. The authors then assess the rationale, personal scope and context of the measure and analyse its added value and compatibility with some general principles of Community law.

The relation between liberty and security has been highly contestable over the past 10 years in the EU integration process. With the expansion of the EU’s powers into domains falling within the scope of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, liberty and its relation to security has brought a new range of issues, struggles and debates. Acts of political violence labelled as ‘terrorism’ and human mobility at the European and international levels have justified the construction of these phenomena as threats to the security and safety of the nation state. They have legitimised the development of normative responses that go beyond traditional configurations and raise fundamental dilemmas for the security and liberty of the individual. This paper assesses the ways in which the notions and perceptions of security and insecurity in the EU have evolved as political values and legal/policy goals, and how they are being transformed. It aims at synthesising the results of the research condu...

Both the EU and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are major political and economic actors, and the development of strategic partnerships in selected areas between the regions is among the priorities on their respective agendas. The existence of complex visa policies and practices between the two regions, however, constitutes a fundamental barrier preventing the promotion of exchanges between these regions when encouraging people-to-people contacts, developing commercial relations or exchanging knowledge. This paper aims at evaluating the possibilities for the visa rules of both regions being modified in order to reflect the privileged partnership that the EU and the GCC are willing to further develop. It concludes by putting forward policy recommendations and three scenarios on the possible ways to overcome current issues and implement new strategies for visa policy in the context of public diplomacy and outreach in EU–GCC relations.

This paper assesses the uses and misuses in the application of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) system in the EU by examining the main quantitative results of this new extradition system achieved between 2005 and 2011. It argues that the next generation of the EU’s criminal justice cooperation and the EAW need to recognise and acknowledge that the mutual trust premise upon which the European system has been built so far is no longer viable without devising new structures and evaluation mechanisms for EU policy stakeholders. These should allow for the recalibration of mutual trust and mistrust in EU justice systems in light of the experiences of the criminal justice actors and practitioners having a stake in putting the EAW into daily effect. Such a ‘bottom-up approach’ should be backed up with the best impartial and objective evaluation, an improved system of statistical collection and an independent qualitative assessment of its implementation.

ABSTRACT The European Commission published in November 2010 a Communication aiming at putting the EU Internal Security Strategy (ISS) into action. The Communication envisages five key strategic objectives for the EU’s internal security: disrupt organised crime, prevent terrorism, raise levels of security in cyberspace, strengthen external borders management and increase the EU’s resilience to natural disasters. This paper starts by critically examining the extent to which these objectives actually constitute shared common concerns in all EU27 member states and whether they are based on independent and objective evidence. After demonstrating the contrary, we then argue that the ISS should be rather considered as an ‘Internal (In)security Strategy’ because of the lack of an accompanying solid rule of law and liberty strategy (model) focused on ensuring the delivery to everyone living in the EU (and who will be subject to increasing EU internal security policies focused on more surveillance, preventive measures and an intelligence-based approach) the twin rights of rule of law and fundamental rights.

ABSTRACT The European Union is currently engaged in formulating a new five-year strategy for the development of the next phase of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), to replace The Hague Programme of 2004, which expires at the end of this year. In June 2009, the European Commission published its views on the new so-called ‘Stockholm Programme’, which will be adopted under the Swedish Presidency in December, in its Communication “An area of Freedom, Security and Justice serving the citizen: Wider freedom in a safer environment”. In this Policy Brief, JHA specialists Elspeth Guild and Sergio Carrera take a closer look at the Commission’s Communication and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches adopted for each of the different policy domains falling under the AFSJ rubric. Their commentary on the three areas also provides answers to some of the thorny questions raised in the priorities for the Stockholm Programme, which are spelt out in the conclusions and policy recommendations.

ABSTRACT Current revelations about the secret US-NSA program, PRISM, have confirmed the large-scale mass surveillance of the telecommunication and electronic messages of governments, companies, and citizens, including the United States' closest allies in Europe and Latin America. The transnational ramifications of surveillance call for a re-evaluation of contemporary world politics' practices. The debate cannot be limited to the United States versus the rest of the world or to surveillance versus privacy; much more is at stake. This collective article briefly describes the specificities of cyber mass surveillance, including its mix of the practices of intelligence services and those of private companies providing services around the world. It then investigates the impact of these practices on national security, diplomacy, human rights, democracy, subjectivity, and obedience.

ABSTRACT The intersection between the Commission Communication on a Common Immigration Policy for Europe, another on a Policy Plan on Asylum and the various drafts of the French Presidency's European Pact on Immigration and Asylum, raises a number of questions: First, what are the nature, context and key issues of the Pact? Does it present anything really new to the current state of affairs in EU law and policy? Second, does the EU really need a pact on immigration and asylum, given the already ongoing processes of Europeanisation surrounding these policy domains? And third, are the EU interests and the Commission's priorities fully compatible with the logic driving the Pact, or does it represent a competing model between 'more Europe' and the principle of subsidiarity and security versus rights in the area of immigration, borders and asylum?

The CHALLENGE project responds to widespread concerns about the resort to specific illiberal practices by contemporary liberal regimes. These practices are linked with the identification of increasing insecurities globally, insecurities that are widely interpreted as obliging sterner policies from the authorities and, consequently, new constraints on principles of liberty under law and presumptions about the innocence of individuals. Specifically, the project examines tensions created by claims that 'security is the first ...

5) Les pratiques quotidiennes de la coopération consulaireLe groupe qui définit et constitue l'appréciation de la menace à l'échelle des individus particuliers pour l'Europe dans son ensemble, est ce réseau de fonctionnaires locaux et de fonctionnaires policiers de liaison détachés dans certaines ambassades et consulats dont la sociographie reste encore à faire. C'est lui qui établit, en fonction des circonstances locales, les règles de vérification des justificatifs liés à la demande de visa...

As we have seen, identity, borders, and orders are intimately related. 1 Sovereign narratives of the national professionals of politics desperately try to continue linking them to the state border, despite the transformations that occurred due to new transport technologies and the desire of people to move. The idea to" seal" the borders is obsolete and nightmarish, especially if politicians try to implement it by adding arbitrariness to inefficiency. The detention of foreigners at-or even on their way to-the borders of the EU is a large-scale ...